President Bush, I feel your pain. Since USA Today revealed that your administration is creating a database of all domestic phone calls, the Left has been on you like white on tofu. Liberals again charge that you are a tyrant leading America down a path to totalitarianism. Don’t they get it? Desperate times call for despot measures.
I don’t stand with the freedom-haters. It’s time for the Left to shut their granola-holes with all this prattle about autocracy.
But at this point, “tyrant” is a bit generous. Tyrants deliver, Mr. President. You clear brush.
Take a look at some of last century’s most draconian dictators and you’ll see a group of men who knew how to turn repression into results. To lump you into this group is an insult to autocracy.
n Benito Mussolini. He may have been a pioneering fascist, but let’s not forget how he famously made Italy’s trains run on time. Even in our highly militarized culture, it took your administration 48 hours to send the National Guard into the Gulf Coast.
n Joseph Stalin. He increased economic growth by 70 percent in a decade – the greatest industrial revolution of all time. You, sir, pissed away a $300 billion surplus in six years. Now our gaping deficit makes the country so dependent on Asian markets you’d think we had an opium addiction epidemic.
n Adolf Hitler. Say what you want about him, but the man clothed his army. Our Defense department skimped on chest armor for American soldiers in Iraq, causing countless unnecessary deaths. According to another report, the Pentagon sent Hummers that would hardly pass an SUV crash test to the Middle East. Four-hundred billion dollars, and we can’t afford a few metal plates? Liberty for security was supposed to be a trade-off, not a trade-in.
But don’t abandon your project of totalitarianism – just up the ante. You can start by liquidating your Cabinet. We need a new energy policy, and your administration thinks “hybrid technology” means compiling phone records and eavesdropping on them, too. Instead of dealing with an arsenal of ticking time bombs such as the environment, the deficit and health care, we’re considering unloading our military arsenal on the Mexican borders and Iran.
It’s too bad, because the right kind of dictator could do so much for this country. Arresting Nancy Pelosi and exiling her to Siberia would be an early Christmas present for all Americans. And instead of circumventing the Senate in every aspect of the war on terror, you can dissolve the legislature altogether. Who’s going to stop you? It’s not like anybody’s going to miss Congress.
Go ahead – be the best absolute monarch you can be. I promise you, things could not get any worse.
Call me if you want more suggestions. You have my number.
Derek Thompson is a Medill sophomore. He can be reached at
